PC candidate Coe joins with Transportation Critic Michael Harris to demand strengthened winter maintenance contracts/standards
WHITBY – Whitby-Oshawa PC Candidate Lorne Coe joined with PC Transportation Critic Michael Harris today to demand the Wynne Liberals restore winter road maintenance standards before any further tragedies and avoidable winter accidents occur under their watch.
Coe and Harris issued their call this morning at a highway stop area near the 401.
“Today, we’re voicing our demand that, after six years of knowingly risking motorist safety, this Wynne Liberal government must restore winter maintenance contract standards before any further tragedies or avoidable winter accidents,” Coe said. “It’s been almost a year since the Auditor report highlighted the Liberal government’s watered-down winter maintenance contract standards as a key concern as they placed cost savings over the safety of Ontario motorists.
“Close to a year later, those standards remain unchanged.”
Harris noted that instead of action on the Auditor’s concerns, Ontario motorists have been met with a fine-and-forget it system, some apps and website tweaks, and news of subsidized equipment levels for low bid contractors.
“New Twitter sites and plow-tracking apps do nothing to help the person stuck on the highway in an accident because roads weren’t cleared,” Harris asserted. “Meantime fines – and certainly unpaid fines – aren’t improving winter maintenance, and are little more than a veiled attempt at shifting the blame to contractors instead of government taking responsibility for their lowered standards.”
Just last week a CTV report indicated that between 2012 and 14 government conducted close to 700 investigations into winter road clearing – close to half of them resulted in contractor failures. Meantime of the $47 million in fines the Ministry has announced in recent years only $14 million has been paid out.
“What more evidence do we need to tell us that this government’s lowered standard, cut-rate performance based contracting for winter maintenance isn’t working? Coe asked. “It’s time to end this ineffective system, and get to the root of the problem – contract standards that since 2009 have increased bare pavement standards from 2 – to – 8 hours in some areas, and increased plow circuit times, meaning less equipment and continued road clearing delays.”